The art of using metaphors is a key aspect of effective public speaking. We saw this during the verbal showdown in parliament between leader of opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Metaphors and the imagery they invoke are never neutral, and carry inherent socio-political connotations and the potential for harm. Modi’s use of the term ‘balak buddhi’ (‘child’s intelligence’) to ridicule Gandhi is a stark example of this, perpetuating ableism and reinforcing the oppressive ‘ideology of adulthood’, as Ashis Nandy has termed it.
Following the prime minister’s remarks in the Lok Sabha, much has been written, yet few have acknowledged the ableist undertones in his speech. Ravish Kumar and Rohit Kumar stand out for having highlighted the way in which ‘child’ as a category has been demeaned and demonised. However, there’s more to it. Such metaphorical deployments should alarm anyone occupying subaltern positions in our unequal society, be it children, disabled, queer people, minorities or women.
As Nandy has argued in ‘Reconstructing Childhood: A Critique of the Ideology of Adulthood’, history reveals that the concept of ‘child’ has been strategically employed by hegemonic ideologies such as colonialism and developmentalism to marginalise and infantilise specific societies, ways of life, and political perspectives. These ideologies perpetuate the notion that the ‘child’ is an incomplete being or homunculus, in need of salvation and guidance from the supposedly superior cultures of adulthood, reinforcing the dominant adult-centric worldview.
Colonialists such as James Mills, Cecil Rhodes, and Rudyard Kipling have projected colonised societies as ‘half savage, half child’ and justified their brutal colonisation. Notably, the politicised use of ‘child’ as a metaphor to demean the ‘other’ persists even today, with the ideologies of adulthood and ableism manifesting in different incarnations and championed by new emissaries.
Also read: Narendra Modi Should Know ‘Balak Buddhi’ Can Trump the Follies of a Closed Mind
In today’s world, development experts believe that ‘primitive’ societies do not know what is best for them; neoliberal disability experts believe that assistive technologies brought out by market forces can transform the disabled into performing and productive human beings. In these totalitarian worldviews, the alternative corporealities of ‘the other’ are either ignored or subdued. Moreover, certain political ideologies in today’s world perpetuate a monolithic narrative that stifles diversity. Crony capitalism and the Hindu Right’s ideology are the most crucial anchors of this monolithic normativity, promoting an exclusive worldview in which difference of ideology is frowned upon.
Against this backdrop, the prime minister’s usage of the term ‘Balak Buddhi’ for the LoP and ‘parasitic’ for the Indian National Congress warrant attention. He also told a story in which he mocked a child who gets gets bullied in school and complains about it. This normalisation of bullying and corporal punishment itself is profoundly disturbing.
Moreover, this is not a one-off incident. In 2019, while interacting with IIT-Kharagpur students, the prime minister had made a deeply problematic comment on dyslexia, ostensibly taking a potshot at Gandhi as a ‘40-50-year-old child’. In this process, he presents himself as an ‘adult’, the normative status of being, and the ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as ‘adult’ and ‘mature’, which everyone must ‘aspire’ to. He was clearly miffed with Gandhi for criticising Savarkar and attempted to justify what was meted out (through various legal cases) to Gandhi in recent years. In this context, he used the imagery of a child who gets beaten up by other children and his teachers for valid reasons.
Modi’s metaphor of the student who is happy at getting 99/543 is also deeply problematic in a society where Kota factories manufacture our success. Merit, in an inequitable society, is often linked with social and economic privileges.
Feminist jurist Margaret Davies opines that in the realm of knowledge, often the position of ‘knower’ is associated with abled-bodied, white heterosexual men. The privileged position given to such men subdues the knowledge(s) and lived experiences of marginalised identities. This is true even with political discourse across the globe.
In India, political discourse is shaped and manufactured by upper-caste, heterosexual men through enabling media and other institutions. This process is effectively establishing the Hindu Right’s ideology as the dominant and normative ideology of the state. In contemporary times, such political discourse has managed to remove ‘secularism’ from our mainstream political vocabulary. It has also successfully made the position of minorities, especially Muslims, extremely precarious, so much so that for almost a decade, political parties have been treating the questions of minorities as a political liability. Civil society, academicians and other stakeholders have also raised concerns about minority and Dalit repression, only to be dismissed as what Nandy calls ‘infantile’, ‘irrational’, and beyond the permissible bounds of dissent.
Dissent has brought numerous predicaments for opposing voices in civil society and thepolitical mainstream, such as jailing, filing FIRs and expunging remarks from parliamentary proceedings. Today, we see a very muscular, male, ableist, and adult version of our parliamentary democracy in which numbers reign supreme and the entire system is subservient to make one ideological framework the normative framework of the state. Any opposition to such normativity is dismissed as distorted, biased and infantile. Child psychologists should study the impact of the prime minister’s speech on children’s psyche. As concerned citizens, we must highlight and expose the political use of ‘child’ and ‘childminded’ to delegitimise opposing voices. Toxic adulthood suffocates us all. It may suffocate democracy, too.
Vijay K. Tiwari is an assistant professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He is a person with disability and deals with critical disability studies.